Prime Minister Andy Burnham is preparing to distance himself sharply from his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, as Labour weighs the possibility of a snap general election in 2027, according to government ministers and aides.
The shift follows Burnham's first statement to the House of Commons since becoming prime minister last week, in which he began by praising Starmer, who had just announced he was stepping away from Parliament. "His leadership took our party from one of its worst defeats to its best victories and created a platform to change this country for the better," Burnham told MPs. "We will use it well and we wish his family the very best for the future."
'He's going to cut Keir loose'
Despite the tribute, Burnham now intends to build the first stage of his premiership by putting clear distance between himself and Starmer, a minister told the Daily Mail. "When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair, one of the reasons he failed was because he could never decide whether to embrace his legacy or distance himself from it," the minister said. "Andy isn't going to make the same mistake. He's going to cut Keir loose."
Brown and Blair were co-architects of New Labour, but their friendship soured as Blair remained in Downing Street beyond what Brown believed had been agreed between them.
A personal rift
Burnham and Starmer have no such history, and by the ministers' own account, the two men "basically hate each other." One minister said Starmer believes Burnham "stabbed him in the back," while Burnham believes Starmer is "trying to sabotage him," adding that Starmer did not tell Downing Street before announcing he was stepping down from Parliament.
Suspicions inside No 10 that Starmer and his allies are working against the new government were heightened after Steve Reed, a Starmer loyalist and former Communities Secretary, appeared to take a swipe at Burnham's devolution plans, saying: "You can't make the rest of the country richer by making London poorer." His comments came soon after the writ was moved for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, triggered by Starmer's departure from the Commons. A member of Burnham's inner circle hit back, saying Starmer "is sulking and acting like a child" and "won't take any personal responsibility for how everything ended."
Redrawing the agenda
The episode over sanctions on Israel, in which Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told MPs the government "should have acted earlier" and credited Burnham with finally recognising "the gravity of the situation," is only the start, a Labour source said. Miliband, who led the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015, was responding to a question from independent MP Iqbal Mohamed.
"We're going to expand that to other areas, like our policy on Neets, the devolution agenda and welfare," the source said, referring to young people not in education, employment or training.
On Wednesday, Burnham told Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch that "national security can't come at the expense of social security," a line widely seen as a misstep. But a minister said Burnham intends to hold his ground against direct welfare cuts, putting him at odds with Starmer, who failed in his attempt to force Labour to accept £5billion of benefit reductions. "He doesn't think you can just axe people's benefits, because that doesn't solve the problem," the minister said. "Andy's seen from his time as mayor of Manchester that if you don't [give people pathways out of poverty], you create further problems elsewhere in the system and it ends up costing you more."
Countering 'Continuity Keir'
Badenoch has seized on the overlap between the two men's records, telling Burnham on Wednesday: "He is pretending that he is the change candidate but the fact is he is still failing to cut welfare, he is still paying to hand over a sovereign territory and he is still not funding defence. On the issues that really matter, is he not just Continuity Keir?"
One Labour MP said the line had landed. "Until now the Tories haven't worked out how best to attack Andy. That's the first of her lines that's landed. He needs to be careful of the Continuity Keir stuff."
Snap election calculations
Behind the strategy lies an expectation, denied by No 10 but widely believed within government, that a snap election could be called in the first half of next year. Reform UK is said to be imploding, splitting the political right, while aides point to polling showing positive response to Burnham's style and to improving economic figures, which some MPs are calling "a window of opportunity."
"Let Reform burn themselves up a bit more, shore up the Left flank with some stuff on Israel and the environment, then go to the country," one Labour MP in a marginal seat said, describing the expected pitch as: "I've done my best but to really clear up the Tories' mess and Starmer's mess, I need my own mandate."
In 2024, Starmer won a 172-seat majority on the message "Vote for me, I'm not Jeremy Corbyn." Burnham's team appear set to try a version of the same approach in 2027: vote for me, I'm not Keir Starmer.
